Reunited
by SR240
Summary: A moment over 20 years in the making. Kataang Spirit World reunion.


**A/N: This fic has been written for months but I never shared it because I haven't done this (fic) in FOREVER. But a fellow author gently nudged me and I figure, as she pointed out, the more people we have sharing their work about Kataang, the better.**

**This was inspired by a fic I read on a tumblr a WHILE back, but I cannot for the life of me remember who it was by. I changed it and expanded on it somewhat, but that was the root idea. I took a few lines from it as well, to expand upon.**

**Anyway! On with it! The fic is divided into two points of view (first Aang, then Katara's).**

**His**

He awakens with a slight jolt, nothing too violent but definitely with a deep, innate sense that something has shifted, something has changed. His eyes open, and the first thing he sees is cobalt blue. The warmth of the sun is on his face, and a gentle breeze whispers in his ears. He furrows his brow, confused. For a moment, things are languid, fuzzy, groggy, and he feels very much the way he did when he woke up on the Fire Nation ship after being struck down at Ba Sing Se. He doesn't understand how he got here. Not even a few seconds ago he had been lying in her arms, and now here he is on his back in the middle of an open field of wildflowers. Still, it feels familiar. He's been here before.

He sits up slowly, taking in his surroundings. It's idyllic, beautiful, pristine (although he usually doesn't use that word, he thinks with a wry smile). Purple mountains and puffy white clouds. It's quiet and so, so still. His gaze takes in the horizon, then the lush green grass with its rainbow of pastel colored flowers, and then it drops down to his own body, and he freezes.

The body he is now slowly beginning to realize he has left behind is gone, and he is a boy of 12 again. He is bare-chested, with his brown traveling pants from his novice monk robes, and his feet are bare. He holds his arms out in front of him and notices that his arrows are gone – or perhaps they're just not there yet, he's not really sure. He stares at himself in mild surprise, and though it's odd he feels like this should feel way stranger than it actually does.

He slowly stands, looking around him, and is startled at the height difference – he had forgotten what it was like to be so short, to view the world from this much closer to the ground. He slowly begins to walk, tentatively, as if he's afraid all this will disappear and he'll be swallowed up whole by some unseen force, but somewhere deep within him he gets the sense that _that is not how this works_, and he continues.

But then it all becomes blurry, muddled, and begins to disintegrate. His gray eyes widen in alarm and he is just about to cry out when another image re-solidifies, and his feet are no longer on soft grass but on smooth, cool stone. He lifts his gaze and his heart stops when he realizes where he is. He would recognize his childhood home anywhere.

"_Lemur!"_

"_Come on boy, yip-yip!"_

"_Let's do a round of airball! First one to 7 wins!"_

"_Close the eyes, and direct your attention to your breath…"_

The sounds and laughter of his friends, fellow monks, his loved ones, his people, fill his ears and his eyes swell with tears. His draws in a sharp breath when he hears the soft, mellow, gentle voice.

"_The secret is in the gooey center. Are you going to help me with these cakes, or no?"_

"Gyatso," he murmurs, a small hole forming in his chest. He draws in a shaky breath, and the surroundings start to blur and shift again.

"No," he whispers, not wanting to leave, wanting to stay here, stay _home_. The ground disappears and suddenly he is falling, falling, slowly and gracefully. He lands gently on his back on soft grass once again, but this time it is nighttime. The sky is full of shooting stars and milky cosmos, constellations dotting the heavens. It is disgustingly hot, sticky, humid. He reaches up to touch the sky with his hand in vain, and notices that his arrows are back. His head feels different and he brings his hand to his skull, and feels the soft, shaggy hair atop his head.

"_Twinkletoes!"_

"_Boomerang!"_

"_Sorry, Sifu Hotman!"_

"_STOP CALLING ME THAT!"_

Tears spring to his eyes anew, and his heart swells at the familiar voices. He smiles, remembering this, remembering here, remembering them.

"_The world can't afford to lose you to the Fire Nation…and neither can I."_

The hole in his chest expands further at the sound of her voice, and it feels as though it will swallow him whole. Suddenly, he is overcome with his unrequited love for her, piercing his heart like an acute ache. He swallows down the acrid lump in his throat, wondering if she is ever, ever going to love him the way he loves her. He draws in another breath, and it hurts. Everything hurts.

He's just about to whisper her name when suddenly the ground disappears, and he is falling again. Down, down, down, slowly and softly, and he is suddenly pressed face-down into something soft and warm. A familiar, sweet scent fills his senses, and he recognizes it immediately as her hair. He knows exactly where and when he is. One of the large, quiet rooms of the Eastern Air Temple, and he is no longer a boy of 13 but a young man of almost-17. The bed is so soft and safe-feeling. He notices that he is naked.

He lifts his head drowsily from her neck, one arm around her waist and the other tangled in her hair. Her legs are wrapped tightly around his waist, arms clutching his back, her slender fingers tracing the tattoo down to the broken spot in the middle of his spine. He looks down at her beautiful face, and she smiles at him with her whole heart in her eyes and he is suddenly captured by the overwhelming desire to cry, though he doesn't. She is breathing heavily, obviously still recovering from the recent burst of pleasure, and he recognizes the wedding necklace he had given her just a few nights before – their wedding night – that he had carved himself. It's the only thing adorning her beautiful, bare body, and the little pendant rises and falls on her breastbone with each heaving breath she takes.

"I love you," she whispers against his forehead, and a little moan releases from his lips as he kisses her. His hand strokes her hair along her temple as his lips travel down her neck, over her cheek, to her ear. He murmurs the words he remembers so clearly saying that night.

"Let's grow old together." His voice is deep, soft, breathless. He senses her smile and she clutches him closer, cupping his cheek to bring his forehead resting back against hers.

"Okay," she whispers back, and just as she pulls him in for another deep kiss, his hand sliding out from her waist, smoothing over her bare hip to slide up and cup her breast and neck, their little world starts to fall away once again. Panic rises in his chest. _No, no no no no_, he begs silently. _Please, no, I don't want to leave her, not her, not our bed, please, no…_

When the world re-forms again, she is still there, but this time she is howling in pain, bent over, her hair damp with sweat and her face slick with the same and tears. He is seated behind her, holding her tightly, soothing her with gentle words of encouragement as he strokes her hair. He is scared to death but desperately trying not to show it, even though he knows that if this goes wrong, if something happens to her, he will die. Finally, there is one last push, and the piercing cry of a baby fills the air. The midwife smiles at them as she hands them the tiny, precious little girl, red-faced and dark haired and wailing, and the second he sees her face he falls head over heels in love.

The squalling infant is placed in their arms and they meet their daughter for the first time. Though his vision is blurry with tears, he can still so clearly see how beautiful she is. His wife, disheveled and exhausted and beautiful, looks up at him with a tearful smile.

"Kya," she whispers. He nods, pressing a kiss to her forehead.

"Of course."

The image morphs yet again, and he screams this time, because he can't leave his wife, his daughter. It's not fair, _it's not fair_. But when it's firm and solid, he sees that he is older now, and he is chasing little Tenzin through the temple, watching the 2-year old run squealing and smiling, and he's pretending to not be able to catch him, laughing and giddy. They round a corner and dart in front of the spinning gates set up in the courtyard, and suddenly the little boy trips and falls. There is a moment of silence and he begins to cry, wailing at the shock of losing his footing. He rushes over to him and scoops him up in his arms, turning his son's palm over to see the little red scratch on the inside. He kisses it, makes it better, and Tenzin laughs and coos, and suddenly his mouth opens wide. He thinks he's going to yawn (or, he thinks with growing dread, burst into tears again for an unknown reason) but instead, he sneezes.

The force of it knocks him over onto his back, still clutching his toddler to him, and his eyes widen in shock. Slowly, he sits back up, staring at the gates in front of them, and his breath catches in his throat when he sees that they are spinning wildly. Dumbfounded, he looks down at Tenzin, who is laughing hysterically over his magic trick, clapping his little hands together, bouncing in his father's lap.

He gazes up at the entrance to the courtyard and sees her standing there, holding Bumi on her hip, and he knows immediately that she's seen the whole thing. They stare at each other, eyes wide.

His eyes fill, and before he knows it, he is clutching the boy to him as hard as he can without suffocating him, and he feels her gentle touch on his head, and he cries and cries until he exhausts himself, but not out of sadness. Out of joy. Out of relief. _No longer the last._

His face was pressed into the tuft of Tenzin's hair, but that changes too and now he sees that it's not Tenzin's hair anymore, but Bumi's. He's clutching him as hard as he can, his stomach clenching with parental worry and anguish but with an equally strong amount of fierce pride. He pulls back to look at his older son, holding back his emotions, knowing that if he starts to cry it'll make Bumi feel guilty and he doesn't want that. It's the last thing he wants. When he speaks, his voice is rough with emotion and unshed tears.

"Be careful," he says hoarsely. "Don't do anything too stupid."

Bumi rewards him with a crooked smile, looking so handsome in his uniform, crisp crimson red and immaculate white pants with shining black boots.

"I'll do my best," he says mischievously, but he can see the solemn sincerity in his eyes all the same. "But no promises, Dad."

As he watches his boy – a man now – sling his pack over his shoulder and run up the ramp to the ship that will carry him away for his first tour to the South Pole, he feels like a small part of himself is leaving with him. Bumi looks over his shoulder, and with another crooked smile, winks. It's at that point that he realizes she is standing next to him, and her fingers slide into his, her eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot.

"He'll come home," she says, more to herself than to him. He nods in agreement, because the alternative is his worst nightmare – any parent's, really.

"He'll come home."

The scene dissolves around him again, and suddenly he is aware of things that seem much more recent and familiar than anything before – aching joints, fatigue, discomfort. When he looks at himself he is both relieved and regretful to see that he is back in the body he left behind in the physical world. Graying hair, wrinkles, but still lean and long. His back aches as he opens his eyes sleepily, and he feels her touch before he sees her. She snuggles up behind him, spooning her body against his, and presses a kiss in between his shoulder blades through his tunic.

"Happy anniversary," she whispers, her smooth palm sliding up the expanse of his back. He smiles and rolls over, pulling her closely against him, and she's gray-haired and wrinkled, too. Her body has felt the effects of aging, places that used to be firm and taught now sag a bit. But rather than detract from her beauty, it just makes her all the more lovely in his eyes, and his rough palms skate up her soft thighs and hips, searching under her nightgown to cup her breasts, thumbs rolling over the small peaks. She giggles girlishly as he presses kisses into her neck, wrapping her arms and legs around him to bring him closer, and he breathes in her scent happily.

"Happy anniversary," he whispers back, his voice muffled against her wrinkled skin. She pulls him with her as she rolls onto her back, and as he slips inside her, fluidly and with an ease that can only come from having spent a lifetime together, he is suddenly overwhelmed with an intense, inexplicable feeling that he needs to make this last. He has the sudden, urgent sentiment that he needs to memorize and remember every detail of her (and he does, because after that there were less physically exerting intimacies, and then the nothing-but-holding which was at the same time enough and not enough). When he begins to feel her body getting tight, feels the shallowness of her breath, he begs her to wait for him and she does, so that they can go together. And they do go together, and he almost wants her to be crying when they collapse down next to each other, to make it okay that he wants to cry as well.

He holds her, naked and beautiful, against his own bare body, feeling her snuggle into his arms as deeply as she can go, and he can't bring himself to tell her that he's fairly certain they have just made love for the last time.

The scene falls away one last time, and he doesn't react or fight it at all this time. He closes his eyes, and when he opens them again, he is back in the field he started in. The wildflowers surround him and everything is quiet again as he stares up at the sky, this time painted wild streaks of orange and pink and yellow and red as the sun sets. He smiles a bit at the symbolism. He understands now. The sun has set. And it will rise again tomorrow, just in the body of someone else.

He sits up, and he finds that he appears as he did when his children were young. Somehow, he doesn't know how exactly, but somehow, he knows that he will stay this way from now on. He closes his eyes and he can still feel her pressed against him, and something inside him breaks. He knows that while he can still see her, she will never be able to see him, or hear him, and he will never be able to touch her, even on the day when the line between their worlds is most blurred – the solstice.

There is a moment, and then he stands. With purpose and with clarity, he begins to walk through the field. He doesn't know where he is going, but he does know that he will wait for her. However long it takes, no matter how many years or lifetimes there are, he will wait for her, and he will find her again when she arrives. And he will love her just as he did in that other lifetime, and just as he will for all the lifetimes to come. His pace increases as he heads towards his nameless destination, unknown even to himself, walking off directly into the sunset before disappearing entirely.

And at that moment, in a small hut in the Southern Water Tribe, the sun gets ready to rise again, in the small, crying form of a beautiful little girl with dark hair and blue eyes. Her parents gaze down at her in adoration, and as she reaches up and clutches her mother's slender finger with her tiny hand, her father beams, stroking the jet black curls atop her head.

"Korra."

**Hers**

She closes her eyes for a moment, just for a moment. When she opens them again, just a fraction of a second later, she's in another place entirely, and she gasps involuntarily at the beauty of it all. It's bright, sun and sky, quiet save for a gentle breeze. She's lying in an open field, blue skies with white, puffy clouds spiraling in all shapes and sizes. Absurdly, inexplicably, she finds herself sharply reminded of Aunt Wu, in that village all those years ago. Reading the future through the clouds. She smiles, remembering soaring through the skies on Appa's back, the two of them waving their arms in graceful tandem, reshaping fortune, reshaping destiny. She can almost hear his 12-year old voice, his laugh as he would point up at the forms, carefree and open and warm. _Hey, that cloud looks like a fluffy bunny._

She turns her head from side to side, colors mixing together, pinks and blues and purples and yellows creating a mosaic of wildflowers surrounding her on all sides. She feels different. The stiffness in her joints, the aches and pains of aging, are gone. She lifts one hand to observe it with a sort of curious detachment. It is free of the wrinkles and spots that had been living there for years. It's smooth, satiny, a creamy mocha hue unbroken by blemish. She turns her head more, gazes down to where her hair, unbound and disheveled, splays out over the lush green grass. She feels like she should be surprised to see that it's dark again, the color of her youth and the first half of her adulthood, but for some reason, in this place, it doesn't seem strange.

She finally pushes herself up, slowly, the breeze kissing her skin as she takes in her surroundings. Clear blue skies are pierced by purple mountains with white caps, and there is a peace here that simply did not – still does not – exist in the life she knows she has left behind. Everything feels different – it is a world, a universe, entirely separate from the old, and though she has never been here before in her life, she feels like she has finally come home.

She gazes down at her body. Like her hair and her hand, it seems normal that her breasts are firmer and higher again. Her curves are soft and round, like they were after her pregnancies, but she is still young, slender, the way she appeared when her babies were children. Then, for the first time, there is mild surprise as she recognizes her clothing. A simple light blue dress with tied shoestring straps, and she doesn't need to reach up and touch her hair to know that there is a ringlet of flowers resting atop her head. Her wedding dress. With her breath catching in her throat, the memory is sharp, vivid, that night over 70 years ago as a girl of 18 at the Eastern Air Temple, where she'd stood before him and Guru Pathik and had pledged her entire life, all of her love and everything that resulted from it to him and him alone, and where he had done the same, tears of happiness brimming in both their eyes. No one there except the two of them and the guru, a moment that they had somehow, someway, had managed to steal from the rest of the world, a world that insisted over and over again on owning them, owning _him_, but they couldn't have this, _they couldn't have this_.

She makes her way to her feet, and she notices that they are bare. Slowly, she takes a few tentative steps through the flowers, reaching out her younger hands to skim the tops of the petals that tickle her waist, a girlish laugh rising in her throat, and she feels joy, actual, real joy, for the first time in nearly two decades. She doesn't know where she's walking to, but after just a few steps, it turns out that it doesn't matter anyway, when she suddenly stops dead in her tracks and freezes.

She senses him before anything else, and what was once her heart and stomach clench painfully in unwanted hope, because she's had dreams like this so many times in so many varieties over so many years, dreams full of his arms and voice and lips and hands and scent and everything that still pierces her body in an acute ache even after all this time. Dreams that would seem to literally fill the gaping hole he had cut in her heart when he left. Dreams that would leave her sobbing like a child into her pillow, clenching at the sheets with her weathered hands, her frail body wracked with grief that never seemed to go away no matter how much time went by. She had moved on, but she had never gotten over it. Something inside her broke that day, something irreversible and beyond repair, that had never been able to fix itself, and every time she dreamed of him, it broke just a little bit more.

It's for that reason that she is afraid to turn around. She doesn't know if she can break yet more still and survive it, even though she knows that living and dying no longer have meaning in this place. Those are ideas and concepts that belong to the physical world, the world she is no longer in. And then a deeper feeling overtakes her, a deeper feeling resonating within her body that assures her _it is different this time_, and from that place she pulls the courage to slowly spin to face him.

He is standing there, about 20 or so feet behind her, and her entire body – throat, heart, stomach – constricts. Her breath catches in her throat, an acrid lump rising up from the base, and the very sight of him has tears springing freely into her sapphire eyes. He says nothing, does nothing, just stares at her as though he is trying to memorize every last inch of her, hungrily drink in every single detail, and his eyes are shining with relief and grief and desperation and joy and sadness and heartbreak and unbridled happiness. She notices that he, like her, looks how he did when their babies were young, and he, like her, is wearing what he wore the night they wed, when he'd been a young man of 16 – simple, white monk robes, flowing, with golden trim. He's so handsome, so beautiful and strong, and she swears that the wave of emotion washing over her would kill her if she weren't already dead.

He takes a few steps towards her, and her breath hitches again, and she feels as though she is dangling on the edge of a great precipice. Each step he takes causes a physical pain because she knows that this time, when he touches her, _it is going to be real_, and she will come undone.

She is practically hyperventilating by the time he stops, now only about 10 or so feet from her, and she sees a single tear fall from his beautiful gray eyes. When he speaks, his voice is thick and cracked with years of longing and waiting and adoration, and love is so heavy in her breast she feels like she cannot breathe.

"I've been waiting for you," he says.

The second the words are out, the second she hears his voice, _oh, his voice_, she breaks completely. A cry of grief and anguish and relief and joy and of _letting go_ tears itself from her throat, and she falls off the precipice and to her knees, sobbing so hard she feels like she is ripping herself apart from the inside out. Normally, she would let her head drop into her hands as she cried, but she cannot take her eyes from his face – she never wants to stop looking at him, wants to look at him forever and ever for the rest of time, and then after that still.

He runs – sprints – towards her at what seems to be breakneck speed, and she reaches her arms out for him greedily, and he falls into the grass in front of her and pulls her into his arms with bone-crushing ferocity. She cries out again, feeling his solid warmth and knowing that _he is real_, rising up onto her knees to clutch him back with all the strength she has in her, renewed by her immortality and re-found youth in this place, and she cries and cries and cries as his lips find hers and he holds her face and she can taste the salt of his tears.

Her lips are everywhere, frantic, in a frenzy, finding his cheeks and forehead and eyes and nose and mouth again and again, and they're sobbing and sobbing, years and years of grief and longing and heartbreak pouring out in one moment, too much to be kept inside, too much to contain. She cradles his head against her as she sinks back onto the ground, and he falls along with her, and she holds him tight against her as he buries his face into her body, against her neck and her breasts and her belly, and she doesn't think she's ever seen him cry this hard, in this life or the last. He manages to finally look up at her through his tears, reaching out with shaking hands to touch her hair reverently. When he speaks, she can see that he can barely even get the words out.

"I've missed you so much," he chokes out.

She pulls him in for a deep kiss, holding his bearded cheeks in her hands, her mouth trembling against his, and she can't kiss him deeply or long enough as she feels his hands card through her hair. It's been almost 20 years and he still tastes exactly the same. When it's over, he makes a noise as their lips separate, a little, sweet, heartbroken noise, and she rests her forehead against his.

"I love you," she whispers tearfully. "Always. I never stopped. I couldn't."

"I was with you," he answers brokenly. "Every day. You couldn't see me or feel me, but I was there. I promise."

She kisses him again and he clutches her as if his life – again, a moot concept in this place – depends on it. She caresses his beautiful face, running her thumbs over his mouth, and he closes his eyes, leaning into her touch, bringing his hand up to hold hers against his cheek.

"I know," she answers. "Sometimes, when I closed my eyes, I could almost feel your arms around me."

This time, he kisses her. "I love you," he whispers against her lips. "I love you. No matter how many lifetimes there are, I will always love you, and I will always find you again." He caresses her cheek, wiping a tear from her eye with his thumb. "Always."

She finally manages a small, tearful smile. "Will we be separated again?" she asks timidly, suddenly afraid, terrified to her core at the very idea.

He shakes his head, cupping the back of hers with his large, gentle hand. "No," he whispers. "We're safe here. We won't ever be apart again. I promise."

At his fervent words, she reaches for him and kisses him like she's starving for it, pulling him against the warm grooves of her body so that he follows her descent to lie down into the soft grass. She feels like corporal pleasures should be nonexistent here, like they shouldn't be able to do this, like it shouldn't be part of this world, but it is, and they can, and they do. Their wedding clothes are shed and she is reminded strongly of their wedding night, of the very first time they touched each other like this, how shy and sweet he had been, so gentle, and there had been a little pain but not too much. And they had clung to each other overwhelmed with emotion, and when it was over, it was as if a part of his soul had been imprinted onto her and vice versa, and they discovered together that while their bond had already been unshakably strong, they had not even begun to scratch the surface of just how deep it went.

There's no pain this time, after so many years of practice, and it's not shy, but open and raw and unreserved, and even after almost 20 years, they remember every groove and inch and nook of each other's bodies, and it's the type of lovemaking that can only be had after years and years of shared intimacy. It feels as though they had been one being, split apart by his early departure, and through this act they were melding the pieces back together again. She clings to him, and whispers into his ear and he whispers into hers, and kisses are pressed to every part of each other they can reach, and they hit their peak together, more cries of joy and sadness before collapsing into each other's arms again, curled up together in the softness of the grass. Bodies flush, holding each other close as though it would be The End Of All Things if either one let go. He continues to whisper into her ear, her hair, and she trembles and shakes and cries and cries and cries because his arms were missed, so, so missed.

She is afraid to close her eyes, though the fatigue is heavy – not just from lovemaking but from the strange feeling she has that she has been carrying weights, heavy burdens, for years and years and years and is finally allowed to put them down and breathe normally. She is afraid that if she closes them, he will leave again, even though in her heart she knows it won't happen. He wraps his arms around her tighter, burying his face into her neck the way he so often did in life, and she cradles his head there, pressing kisses onto the sky blue ink atop his skull.

"Stay here with me," she whispers. "Please." Her voice breaks on that last word.

"Always," he murmurs back. "Always."

With that reassurance, she finally closes her eyes, and all fear seems to vanish as if it were never there. Suddenly, the world surrounding them, that had seemed so unfamiliar upon awakening, feels as though she's lived in it her entire life. She pauses for a moment, wondering how such a strange place could feel so much like home.

Then, just as suddenly, she understands it's not this world that is her home. It's him.


End file.
